A spokesman for the Republican National Committee said Monday that his organization would play no role in monitoring the alliance formed between Ohio Gov. John Kasich (R) and Sen. Ted Cruz (R-TX) to defeat Donald Trump in key primary states.
“Every campaign has to run its own strategy,” Sean Spicer told MSNBC host Steve Kornacki. “It’s really not our job at the RNC to handicap it as much to ensure that we have a fair and transparent process.”
The Cruz and Kasich camps announced on Sunday that they would temporarily join together to prevent Trump from securing the delegates needed to earn the party’s nomination before its July convention in Ohio. In a divide-and-conquer strategy, Cruz plans to focus on winning Indiana while Kasich plans to devote resources towards Oregon and New Mexico.
Trump dismissed the plan as a last-ditch effort by two floundering candidates.
Spicer acknowledged on MSNBC that the Cruz-Kasich alliance was unprecedented, but he reiterated that the committee would remain completely hands-off in determining the strategy of individual campaigns.
“The RNC’s job is to be that fair and neutral arbiter of the process,” he said. “We’re going overboard in doing that. We’ve launched a website, ConventionFacts.GOP, which allows people to better understand the process. And I understand we haven’t been through this open type convention since 1976. We’ve got to re-educate a lot of voters and grassroots folks as to what the process is.”
